Most Americans are getting sick and tired of police officers over-stepping their authority when they confront citizens who are doing nothing wrong. And now, the NYPD stepped into it big time after forcefully arresting a woman for standing outside a restaurant. She also happens to be a human rights attorney. Oops.

Chaumtoli Huq was a victim of police harassment in July as she innocently waited outside a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant in New York City for her husband and children to use the restroom. As she waited, police approached her and ordered her to “move along” after a pro-Palestinian rally.

Huq informed the officers that she would leave after her family reunited with her. But the cops didn’t care. Instead, they slammed Huq against a wall, pinned her wrists and forcefully arrested her for doing absolutely nothing wrong. When she cried out in pain and called for help, one officer told her, “Shut your mouth.”

I was just thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ and all of a sudden the officer flips me [around]…he [turns] my body and presses me against the wall of the restaurant. He shoved my left arm all the way and kept pushing it and handcuffed me. At that point I just like instinctively yelled, ‘Help!’ because I was alone. I screamed, ‘Help!’

Officer behavior took a sexist turn from there. After finding out that her last name is different from her husband, an officer told Huq that “in America, wives take the names of their husbands.” The officers also illegally searched her purse without cause or a warrant.

The 42-year-old mother of two was held for nine long hours before being released and she is fighting back. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, the officers and NYPD were blasted for their “aggressive overpolicing of people of color and persons lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Police definitely picked the wrong woman to mess with. As a human rights attorney, police brutality is in Huq’s legal wheelhouse. Making sure that police treat human beings within the law is exactly what she works for. Police officers shouldn’t be allowed to get away with how they treated Huq or any other person they’ve harassed, assaulted, or brutalized on the job, especially citizens who have done nothing wrong. Hopefully, this lawsuit will help put police on notice that they need to change their ways.